


The Absence of One Dr. John Watson

by 75cookies



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-26 16:58:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/652455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/75cookies/pseuds/75cookies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock discovers hell</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Absence of One Dr. John Watson

"Damn it, Watson."

Two pale hands on the familiar table top of 221 B, fingers splayed.

Sunlight from the window laid warm kisses on his cold hands, brilliant squares of light blanketed the tabletop.

Dust danced in the sun rays.

Isn’t it funny what you notice at times like these? Distracted by the inconsequential while you lay on reality’s operating table; while it guts and debones you.

Nails dig into the maple wood grain as his fingers curl, scraping, looking for some hand hold- something, anything, to grip onto, but there is nothing, like the expanse laid out before him. 

"Damn."

Head bowed and shoulders slumped, the hands fall lifeless to black-garbed sides.

The English language failed him. For that matter, so did French, German and Hebrew. Nothing, no trite word nor fancy phrase could adequately describe the torture, the pain, the longing, the lingering guilt, the love that wasn’t, the complete and utter

Consuming

Hollow

Nothing

That

Stuffed

Itself

Down

His

Throat

And 

Suffocated

Him.

Damn John Watson. Damn him for leaving. Damn Sherlock Holmes, for buying into society’s stupid, stupid ideas of sentimentalism. Sherlock was sentimental - or at least he had been taught to be, taught by John Watson...and look where it got him- hell.

Literally.

That's what this was, after all, that's what this _had_ to be. There’s nothing else for it, no other possible explanation. Nothing else could be so, so horrible...so perfectly torturous than the absence of one Dr. John Watson.

He was dead.

Of course…it was so obvious now!

An ironic smile forms on white lips.

If this was hell, and, of course, he had deduced already that it was, (and his deductions are never wrong) than obviously he was dead.

Stupid, _stupid._

Of course John wasn't here- he'd always been a good man- a polite, moral, upstanding citizen...

He’d never be in hell.

So...this was death then. How very droll.

There was no point then. Not without John, there was no point.

His knees gave out. Soft flesh meets hard floor. There would be bruises tomorrow. ...did one bruise in the afterlife?

Sherlock supposed he would find out.

Eye level now, with the dirt and dust and other upswept -ities that littered his floor, his brain, his heart, his past...

He lay there a thousand long years.

A million years.

A billion years... Just thinking, just _being_ (or, not being, seeing as he wasn't a being) just wishing...

On John Watson, the same damned man who condemned him to this stinking, sweating damned hole.

The same man he loved, anyway.

He was gone now -he'd left. 

Damn him, the bastard.

Eyelids gratefully slide shut to hide this disgusting eternity without.

He'd kill himself...if he wasn't already dead.

Tears now, and trembling breaths. 

Another ironic smile.

Only in death, it seems, could Sherlock could be human.

Now that he's gone, now that it’s too late, now that there's _no fucking point_...

He mourns for friendship.

For love.

For the love that might have been...

...but never was.

Every John-less second was amazingly awful, complete writhing agony.

His insides sizzled on hot coals, blazed in fire, swelled till his organs burst opened and bled out, then shriveled away to burnt ashes of nothing.

Nothing. His past meant nothing. He was nothing. His future held nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

John was the only _something_.

And he was gone.

He had to hand it to the management...they did hell well.

He would lie here, in a soulless agony

Outward limbs heavy, numb, unmovable stone, yet insides screaming in empty, empty, fire.

.

Blind and deaf and dumb and aware of nothing but the pain.

And the love.

And the absence of one, Dr. John Watson.

\--

“Sherlock? What are you laying on the floor for? Bloody hell, are you _crying_?”

His eyes snap open to rest on a piece of pure heaven: John, ever dressed in a jumper, nursing two bursting grocery bags to his chest. “John?”

With the agility of a much younger man he springs to his feet “John! It’s you!”

The only evidence that he was ever on the ground is stuck to his shirt front.

“I leave for forty minutes and –Oof!”

His words are cut short as a much taller man hits him squarely in the chest. Two arms wrap around his middle and hold him tightly in place.

Right against Sherlock.

Right where he belongs.

Two grocery bags smash against the floor. Milk is everywhere.

“Sherlock!” he protests, trying to pull the man away “Look what you’ve-“

“John, you outstandingly magnificent, unbelievingly angelic, uniquely delightful, completely heroic man!”

John, though thoroughly confused and more than a little pink, looks very pleased. 

 pleased.


End file.
